The Marine Museum at Fall River is a cultural gem and contains a wealth of Fall River Maritime History especially Steam Ship and Titanic memorabilia. Discover the art, books, models and many treasures the Marine Museum holds. This is a must see
...

The Marine Museum at Fall River is a cultural gem and contains a wealth of Fall River Maritime History especially Steam Ship and Titanic memorabilia. Discover the art, books, models and many treasures the Marine Museum holds. This is a must see resource for landlubbers and mariners alike.

Carol Gafford is a public librarian, family historian, amateur archivist and book savior. She is currently the youth services/outreach librarian at the Swansea Public Library and volunteers for several museum and historical societies including the Marine Museum at Fall River, the Swansea Historical Society and the Bristol Historical and Preservation society. She is the editor of Past Times, the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists and is always looking for a new project to take on.

Hymn for Her has always been a duo with a singular approach, two unique musicians playing a country-blues/punk/psychedelic rock mix that is nothing if not gritty, authentic and constantly surprising. So who's even going to blink at the news that their new album, "Lucy and Wayne's Smokin' Flames," comes with a brand new hot sauce the band is also selling at gigs.

Hymn for Her returns to Mari's Place in Quincy Saturday night, their first visit to the cozy Quincy pub since 2011, when they were promoting their breakthrough album, "The Amairacan Stream."

That previous album had been recorded entirely in their 20-foot Airstream trailer, the vehicle that served as their home for much of the year. But for this new album, the duo went to a real studio, and worked with a producer with a big time pedigree, Jim Diamond of White Stripes fame. Of course they got to use all kinds of analog equipment at the Detroit studio Diamond favors, so the new CD sounds just as down and dirty as anything in the Hymn for Her catalog. Better yet, the duo is now part of the Conqueroo family of artists, meaning wider recognition and a fast-rising national profile.

We caught up with cigar-box guitarist Lucy Tight as she and her husband, drummer/multi-instrumentalist Wayne Waxing, were catching a couple days off the road at their Philadelphia area home. Their traveling party has changed abit since their previous visit, and the Airstream is now basically a home studio, which is about to have a new floor installed. The band travels now in a more conventional van, and their daughter is now six years old. Sadly the friendly Labrador Retriever that also was part of the family, ("our first child," Tight called her) and greeted patrons at Mari's last time, passed away last year.

"Oh Conqueroo has been awesome for us," said Tight. "They've helped us get loads of publicity, and we've been getting some big press. We've been in the Huffington Post, and on the Yahoo News site. We're not on David Letterman yet, but we're working our way up, level by level. It feels like we are totally moving forward, so that is good."

Following up the 2010 album, which itself generated months of touring, was no problem, because the dynamic twosome manages to write new music almost constantly.

"Writing is an ongoing process for us, and we don't have a lot of down time to just write," said Tight. "We have to be able to to do it while we're on the road. We are working on a new video this week, our second one from the new release, and that's been a lot of fun. Wayne's family is building us a coffin to use in the video, so it has been a fun combination of family time and work."

Standout tunes on the new disc include the woozy tribute to desert mysteries, "Mojave," and the rowdy "Glistening Cowgirl." There's also a neat new video online for "Lucy Fur." And the duo is also doing a breakneck cover of Led Zeppelin's "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" in concert, so fans have lots of new tunes to savor this weekend. Of course, "Fiddlestix" just might still be the all-out jamming show finale.

After this Quincy stop the Hymn for Her caravan moves on for three dates in Maine. We wondered why such a compelling group doesn't yet have a regular stop in Boston proper.

"It's dependant on where we get the gigs," Tight chuckled. "We have played a lot of cities, practically every city out there--most recently Denver, Seattle, Tuscon, Phoenix, Los Angeles. Basically our booking agent tries to arrange it so they make sense for routing our tours."

Tight plays one of those classic old cigar box guitars, which is not especially tuned to any conventional tunings, and delivers a sound all its own, covering both bass and regular guitar notes in many cases. How easy is it to keep the instrument ready to go, and does she have backups if needed?

"It's not at all hard to keep in tune," said Tight. "My cigar box stays in tune real well. Now we have a couple of extras. I had people in Alabama and Florida who built me a couple new ones, so I can switch off if I want."

With such a cross-genre sound, can Hymn for Her take advantage of the lucrative summer music festival season? Where would they fit in, exactly, blues festivals, folk fests, or just wide ranging rock festivals?

"We're just starting to get known, in the third year of our touring," said Tight. "We have started getting invited to festivals this year, a couple folk festivals, a couple blues festivals, and a lot of Americana-type fests. We can fit into a lot of genres, more so than your typical rock act. We can adjust our set to play either a sit-down folk festival, or a heavy metal rock fest. We love it all, and that variety makes it fun for us too."

Mari's Place fans can expect lots of new material, some old favorites, more than a few surprises, and a dynamic show unlike anything else they've heard for quite a while. With no cover charge, it's a huge deal for music fans.

"Fans who don't know us ought to check out YouTube," Tight noted. "We have about ten different videos up there now, so people can see what we're all about before coming out to see us."